Indonesian surrenders, confesses to plot over Rohingya treatment

JAKARTA -- An Indonesian terror suspect has surrendered himself and confessed to a suicide bomb plot against Buddhists in Jakarta to protest against Myanmar's treatment of Muslim Rohingya, police said Monday.

A man who identified as Muhammad Toriq turned himself in on Sunday, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said. The suspected militant fled his house in a Jakarta suburb last week after neighbors reported seeing smoke rising from it.

Police had launched a manhunt for him after discovering detonators, boxes of nails, sulphur and other explosive materials at his home.

Toriq wrote a farewell letter to his family, seeking forgiveness and "hoping to enter Heaven and receive God's blessings," Amar said.

The development came a day after an explosion at a house suspected of being a bomb workshop in Depok, near Jakarta, left three people injured.

Earlier this month, a shootout in Solo in central Java left two terrorist suspects and an anti-terror officer dead.

Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country by its population, has waged a crackdown on militant groups over the past decade with anti-terror police claiming the deaths of some of the country's most notorious terrorist suspects in bloody raids.